(How) should judges talk to the public? Court communication strategies in times of 'rule of law backsliding.' Wherever liberal democracy comes under attack, the judiciary is particularly targeted as one of the core elements of any state under the rule of law. As the “least dangerous branch of government”, it has no leverage to enforce the implementation of its decisions. In addition, its authority is highly dependent on public trust, based on the assumption that judges are working in the public interest to solve problems in accordance with legally established rules, thereby contributing to the pacification of social conflicts. This is where the current trend to deliberately undermine the legitimacy of an independent judiciary comes into play: Personal attacks on judges, defaming them as politically biased, elitist, and corrupt, are increasing. Moreover, while there have always been occasional cases of ‘executive disobedience’, the triumphant announcement of high-ranking government officials to disregard ‘unpleasant’ court decisions is new. My research aims to document this trend from a comparative German-US perspective and to contextualize it within the different institutional settings of both countries. Are there certain patterns when and by what means the authority of an independent judiciary is challenged? How do the public and the media respond to such attacks? In a second step, my research focuses on the analysis of possible counter-strategies of affected courts and judges. I want to explore potential effects of public communication by courts and/or individual judges: To what extent is it possible and, above all, effective to counter political attacks on the integrity and legitimacy of judicial institutions and on specific court decisions by proactively explaining their importance? Should the normative foundations, procedural rules, and substantive arguments of particular rulings be publicly justified by those who issued them?